Beauty,
Meaning & Art

Plato and Aristotle, like many philosophers, artists, critics and artlovers
since their time, thought that Beauty and Harmony were the main subject
of art. But must great art be beautiful? What about a painting like
Picasso's Guernica? It is rightly accepted as a great painting.
But many who think it is great would not say it is beautiful.

It is actually easy to agree that Guernica is great art, and
agree that it is not beautiful, without rejecting beauty as the defining
characteristic of art. A piece like Guernica derives its
power in part from ugliness and distortion. These qualities are
opposites of beauty; so the Beautiful and the Ugly may still be the
main features that draw us to such works as this.

Still, this seems like an inadequate response to Guernica.
The presence of Beauty (or its opposites) may be important, but
that alone does not explain the power of the painting. Picasso
painted it after the bombing of the Spanish town of Guernica, perpetrated
by Franco's forces during the Spanish civil war. The painting overflows
with powerful symbols and references to the horror and senselessness
of war. Without these meanings, it would be a far less powerful painting.
So while the Beautiful and the Ugly are key characteristics of
art, and few works function without some use of them, the Meaningful
and the Senseless are equally important characteristics of art, and
sometimes they predominate.

(Challenge question: See if you can think of any other categories that
play an equally important role in any of the arts.)